Friday, June 21, 2013

Time: 45 minutes.

Situation: A quiet room with my eyes closed, sitting in a chair with my hands on my knees.

Experience: I closed my eyes and observed sight-sensations flickering in and out of existence at about six times per second. Strength of concentration was moderate; equanimity was low. I reminded myself that all of "this" was not me, not permanent, and not satisfying, and to give whatever presented as an object some space.  Awareness shifted to touch-sensations and the rate of flickering increased slightly. I fell into a little story and then snapped back. There was a lot of entanglement between my sense of self and sensations. Slowly, concentration increased and so did equanimity. I continued to fall into stories now and again, but between them sensations were presenting clearly as objects and concentration was high enough to see that they were not "me". The last ten or so minutes of this session I was pretty tired and my concentration suffered a little.

 
Observations: I took a long nap yesterday and took TWO long naps today, so I feel much better than I have the last few days. I'm still exhausted (not really sure why), but I feel like the extra sleep has gone a long way towards getting me back on track. I know the difference was palpable between my meditations over the last few days, and my one today. I'm still focusing on Not Self and trying to really chip away at the sense that sensations are anything but what they. Its a new phase of meditation and one I'm not SUPER precise with yet. But, I'll keep pounding away.


FYI: I found the comment by Nikolai found at this link helpful - http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/4381924

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